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This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Rachel Martin. Mary Oliver is a Pulitzer Prize-winning
poet whose body of work is largely filled with imagery of the natural world. Her most
recent collection is titled "A Thousand Mornings." I spoke with her from member station WSHU
in Fairfield, Connecticut. She began our interview by reading her poem, "I Happen to Be Standing."
MARY OLIVER: (Reading) I don't know where prayers go or what they do. Do cats pray while
they sleep half-asleep in the sun? Does the opossum pray as it crosses the street? The
sunflowers, the old black oak growing older every year? I know I can walk through the
world along the shore or under the trees with my mind filled with things of little importance.
In full self-attendance, a condition I can't really call being alive. Is a prayer a gift
or a petition, or does it matter? The sunflowers blaze - maybe that's their way. Maybe the
cats are sound asleep, maybe not. While I was thinking this, I happened to be standing
just outside my door with my notebook open, which is the way I begin every morning. Then
a wren in the privet began to sing. He was positively drenched in enthusiasm. I don't
know why. And yet why not? I wouldn't persuade you from whatever you believe or whatever
you don't. That's your business. But I thought of the wren singing what could this be if
it isn't a prayer? So, I just listened, my pen in the air.
MARTIN: Poet Mary Oliver. I asked her if she in fact begins her days the way she describes
in this poem, "I Happen to be Standing." OLIVER: Almost. I thought, gee, I do lie a
little bit. And I should have said, which is the way I begin most mornings.
MARTIN: Talk to me a little bit about that ritual. Do you make it part of the writing
discipline to go out into the world and make some observations every day?
OLIVER: I think it began with discipline, because I did understand that any artistic
venture requires a lot of discipline. But it's no longer a discipline, it's no longer
something I think about. I'm often up - on most mornings - I'm up to see the sun. And
that rising of the light moves me very much. And I'm used to thinking and feeling in words,
so it sort of just happens. MARTIN: Have you always done that? Have you
always written in the mornings? OLIVER: Yes, yes. I like the mornings. I like
to give the mornings to those first good thoughts. And I suppose in a way it sets up the day.
MARTIN: You have written many collections. How is this one different?
OLIVER: I think one thing is that prayer has become more useful, interesting, fruitful
and, again, almost involuntary in my life. And when I talk about prayer, I mean really
what that Rumi says in that wonderful line, there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss
the ground. I'm not theological specifically. I might pick a flower for Shiva as well as
say the hundredth prayer. The name of the god doesn't interest me so much as the fact
there are so many names of that mystery. MARTIN: Has your work become more prayerful,
more spiritual over the years? OLIVER: I would say yes. Maybe a little bit
of that is that the two things I loved from a very early age were the natural world and
dead poets, which were my pals when I was a kid. But the concern I have for the natural
world is really a very sorrowful business. MARTIN: Why sorrowful?
OLIVER: Because we aren't doing what we should do to preserve the world. The woods that I
loved as a child are entirely gone. The woods that I loved as a young adult are gone. The
woods that most recently I walked in, they're not gone but they're full of bicycle trails
and - I grew up in a town that was 3,500 people in Ohio, very pastoral and there were woods
to go to. That town is now over 250,000 people. And this is happening to the world and I think
it is very, very dangerous for our future generations, those of us who believe that
the world is not only necessary to us in its pristine state but it is in itself an act
of some kind of spiritual thing. I said once, and I think this is true, the world did not
have to be beautiful to work, but it is. What does that mean?
MARTIN: Because you write about the natural world and because you write these beautiful
meditations about your natural surroundings, as so many others have done, how do you find
new words to describe what you see? OLIVER: I suppose by paying very close, close,
close attention to things and seeing new details. I love words. I love the mechanics of poetry.
I often speak of the choreography of the poem on the page. And to find a new word that is
accurate and different, you have to be alert for it. It's wonderful. It's fun. But one
thing I do know is that a poetry to be understand must be clear. It mustn't be fancy. I have
the feeling that a lot of poets writing now are - they sort of tap dance through it. I
always feel that whatever isn't necessary should not be in the poem.
MARTIN: How do you know when a poem is done? OLIVER: Oh. Well, I don't know that you ever
know but in some way you have made a completion of a thought or a mood or whatever you're
doing and it's time to go on with the next one.
MARTIN: Mary Oliver. Her new book of poetry is called "A Thousand Mornings." She joined
us from member station WSHU in Fairfield, Connecticut. Mary, thanks so much for talking
with us. It's been a real pleasure. OLIVER: Thank you, thank you. A pleasure for
me too.